Ingredients 2 medium size bunches of coriander leaves (about two baking cups) 12-14 dry red chillies 1 lime sized ball of tamarind 1/2 cup urad dal (baking cup measure) 2 tsp (flat) asfoetida Salt to taste 1. Wash and dry the coriander stem and leaves. 2. Chop the stem and leaves into little pieces. […]
Ingredients (Baking cup quantity measures) Grated carrots – 2 cups Light brown sugar – 3/4 – 1 cup (depending on how sweet you like the cake) (I used 3/4 cup) Unsalted butter – 125 gms (For healthier options, use canola or corn oil) All purpose flour – 1 1/2 cups Pistachios – 3/4 cup […]
Jon Stewart was television gold. His beautiful, sardonic face dominated America’s political opinion-scape with a raised eyebrow and a barely perceptible twitch for 16 years on The Daily Show. The show was ironically aired on Comedy Central, a channel one would not expect searing political satire from but Stewart was nothing if not an astute […]
When I took leave of Patiala and my first job as an LKG teacher, I was given two Tarla Dalal books by my colleagues to accompany me to my new life in Bengaluru. This was in 1994 and Ms Dalal was possibly the only known name in the Indian publishing industry. The recipe booklet that […]
Avoid. Delay. Procrastinate. Distract. Quit. Run. This is what I do when things don’t go my way. It’s always easier than confronting the problems. Or so I thought till I learned it the hard way. I ran away to Pondicherry to do my M.S. thinking that my problems would stay behind in Chennai. But […]
The imperishable memories Shweta Tripathi gathered while playing a small-town girl in Neeraj Ghaywan’s Masaan include the night when she sobbed over the end of a beautiful story. She recalls, “I cried not for what was happening to my character but for what was happening to her story with Deepak. I just lay, looking up […]
For some reason Drishyam reminded me of RGV’s Bhoot where Ajay Devgn spent a good amount of screen time going up and down elevators. And looking scared, thoughtful or protective when he was in his house. He does a lot of bike riding in this film, and jeep driving and bus commuting and frowning […]
Debutant director Neeraj Ghaywan grasped that both life and death can co-exist in the same river when during a recce around the Ganges, he saw loss interwoven with the infinitude of existence and hope. A man sitting still in a boat holding a shrouded baby, looking at a distance.. unable to let go. And a corpse […]
A katori of kheer as an ice-breaker between a sulking father and a daughter. The birthday gift of a recorder that plays back the voice of a beloved interspersed with romantic songs. A furtive phone chat on a terrace amid clothes drying under the sun. The banter with a roadside chaat vendor. Strings of […]
I was in Bombay in January 1993 after the “riots” when mobs went on a rampage burning their shops and killing them where they could find them. And before the retaliatory bomb blasts by the Memon gang. ** I remember walking around a familiar shopping area in Andheri, seeing once famous shops (owned by Muslim merchants) […]
Tu kisi rail si guzarti hai..main kisi pul sa.. thartharata hoon (You pass by like a train…I shudder, pulse like a bridge). These lines from a Dushyant Kumar poem in Neeraj Ghaywan’s debut film Masaan, take you back to the terrace of a small town home where in the middle of the night, you heard […]
Over a decade ago, at Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, I spoke with a youthful conviction on why Hindi cinema must never be dismissed as just another drug to keep the masses oblivious to the real issues of governance, poverty, disenfranchisement, corruption and more. When gently asked by the moderator, why Hindi cinema could not be […]